On Turning 75

Although mindful of the saying that too many birthdays will kill you, I recently celebrated 75 years on this earth.  Which can be viewed from two perspectives.  Looking back, that I have lived through, successfully completed, three quarters of 25 years each.  Or, looking forward, that I am now starting my fourth quarter during which, most probably, I will come to the end of the game.

I entered adulthood when the adage was “Don’t trust anyone over 30”.  So, 75 years old was an unrelatable level of anciency; more even than the three score and ten allotted to us in the bible.  Today I view 75 as still fairly young although I got here much faster than I ever imagined possible. Which leads me to ponder how many more birthdays will I celebrate before they actually do kill me?  And, in what condition?  Will I be enjoying my quality of life in this quarter or enduring it?

For a few years ago I joined a memoirs writing group for which I have written almost 150 stories; recollections of life; stories of work, childhood, family and, only occasionally, attempts to wax philosophically about life or to pass along what I hoped qualified as wisdom acquired over those many years.  I have now written all the stories I can think of which conform with Ben Franklin’s admonition to “Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.”  I hope whoever reads them will find some to be interesting or funny or revealing of a truth about life or even explain, to some extent, who I am and how that “me” was formed.  I suppose I will not truly be finished writing memoirs until my obituary which, my wife insists, I write myself.  The only flaw in her request is that I will not be here to report how it all ends.

Regardless, now it is time to leave the past behind me.  It is time to look to the future.  What now, I ask?  How do I fill the years left to me in this final quarter?  I have long joked I hoped to be able to simply sit up and feed myself if I ever made it to 70.  Members of my memoirs class, who share my advanced age, with some even more “senior”, have shown me it is possible to remain mentally sharp, retain one’s memory and still able to practice life-skills such as writing, all while being physically active well into their 80’s and beyond.  They are my role models.

So, what is ahead?  There are grandchildren to watch grow into adulthood, begin careers, marry – or not – but hopefully to provide the gift of great grandchildren.  There are trips to take, friends and family to interact with; to support and to be supported by them.  It is time to slow down, to take the time to enjoy the simple pleasures of life; reengage a neglected hobby, maybe volunteer, take walks in the park or simply enjoy a meal or glass of wine.  There is no longer any need to either rush into or past these things.

My mother-in-law always said, when trying to decide whether or not to do something or go somewhere, that one should decide to “Make a memory”; a double benefit creating both a memory for yourself while providing something worth writing as a memoir for your posterity – if they ever become curious enough to want to learn whatever happened to this old guy to make him how he is, or was.

I don’t know what the future holds nor how or when it will end.  Neither do I know how to end this little story, so, just let me ask you to wish me luck!

Finding My Voice

It is fair to ask “why do I write”? I ponder that myself. I thought about this question for some time before beginning to write this particular prompt. I never wrote much before being approached by my childhood friends to be a beta tester for their new baby boomer website MyRetrospect. I wrote when an idea came to mind that I had to put down. I wrote my Sarason family history after my father died more than 30 years ago as I sought answers to questions that I never thought to ask my father and now never could.

These friends, who have known me since 10th grade, were aware that I have lived a life full of ups and downs, had some interesting stories to share and would not sugar-coat the details as I shared them with others.

The answer is not simple, but as a trained actress, I learned to be a keen observer of people. I love history, following the stories of others as well as my own. I have a point of view. Indeed, I am often called out for giving “TMI”, as I share information.

About 25 years ago I heard a friend talk about The Chilmark Writer’s Workshop. She was a smart, clever person. We’d done volunteer work together and I admired her facility with words. She praised Nancy Slonim Aronie, a published author, guest speaker on NPR, who ran these workshops from her home on Martha’s Vineyard. My friend said she took the workshop multiple times. She laughed, saying she was a slow learner.

I was intrigued. Nancy ran ads in the local papers with dates and contact information. In 2003, I signed up for my first (I took the workshop three times in total, the last time in 2011, the summer after my mother’s death. Nancy said I should come to process that event). The workshop (a half hour drive from my home) ran from 9am-noon, Monday-Thursday. As I recall, at the time, we each paid something over a hundred dollars to attend (though scholarships were available). We brought a pad of paper and pen and our fertile minds (some at the time had laptops; I still don’t). Nancy was so well known that some came from off-island just to attend. We sat around in a circle and listened to her share her wisdom. We were a mixed group, as many as a dozen of us, of all ages, some very good writers, some novices like me. This was a judgement-free zone. When Dan heard what was going on, he said it wasn’t writing, it was therapy. The two were closely linked. Based on the prompt, our writing often touched our emotions.

It was Nancy’s thesis that all of us could write, we all have something to say, but at some point along the way, we’ve been silenced by someone, “lost our voice”; perhaps a teacher, a parent, some authority figure who shut us down. She aimed to liberate our inner voice, and silence that inner critic to allow us to let our ideas flow freely. I considered that. Certainly my mother was always critical of me, and even now, someone close to me must correct and criticize much of what I say and do. I could relate to what Nancy said. She talked about her own personal struggles, the health problems of her younger son, diabetic at 9 months old, diagnosed with MS in his 20s. He was still alive when I took this first class with her (she used him as an example to teach perspective). He died before I took the last workshop. Each day there was some new lesson, but lots of time for writing.

The prompt would be given as the opening line of the story. The first was always: “dinner at my house was…”. And we’d be off for 10 minutes to write something. We would then read our stories around the circle and each say one POSITIVE thing about what we liked about it. This was not a workshop about learning HOW to write, the finer points of grammar, how to construct an interesting narrative. It was about expressing yourself and getting positive affirmation for it. We had all sorts of prompts. One was just “boobs”. One woman around the circle was recovering from breast cancer, so yes, that essay was very emotional. The prompts often triggered an emotional response. That is why Dan called it therapy, but writing one’s feelings is not a bad thing. We learned about ourselves through the narrative.

We would break at mid-morning for some warm, home-made bread with delicious butter or jam. Nancy was hamish (in the best Yiddish way; she also wrote a great story about not fitting in as a very tall Jewish girl from West Hartford, going to college in Virginia. She could be bitingly funny and she always wrote and read her own story for each prompt. I tried to take it all in, from the good writers and the not-so-great writers). At the end of the day we were given a prompt for overnight. We were instructed to spend at least 30 minutes or longer on it. Two of those have been used as stories for Retrospect, most notably, my story about my cousin Alan Jackson. The prompt was: “the last time I saw him…” I’ve used that story (and added more to it, as I learned more about him) twice. It is now called “Action Jackson”.

I enjoyed these workshops enormously, but did not continue writing after. I seem to need a prompt to inspire me. But I did feel free to get things off my chest, to shape a story, to share, but perhaps not over-share.

I told Patti and John about these workshops during one of our visits. They write for a living. I didn’t know at the time they were working on Retrospect (I would learn about it soon enough). The very first prompt was “Food”. It was taken from “dinner at my house was…”. I didn’t make the connection right away, they told me that later. And when we write comments after the story, it says in the comment box, “Say One Positive Thing About This Story”. That also comes from Nancy’s workshop. We are not here to critique, but to be supportive. This isn’t a class in writing. We are just enjoying others’ narratives.

I was honored when they invited me to be a beta tester. I wasn’t sure my writing was good enough (there was that negative inner voice – I needed to quiet it), or that I’d always have something to say for each prompt, but I told them I’d try. And here I am, almost six years and 300 stories later (and new owners). I find something to say about everything. It may not be the most interesting, but I try to personalize it, make it interesting. It has become a good mental program for me, life-affirming, a way to share my stories.

Why do I write? I write to learn more about myself.

A current photo of myself; April, 2022, with my nephew Mike Sarason

 

 

 

Being 64

In a few days, I will become my grandmother.  That’s Grandmother January (Annie Naomi Andrews January), who was sixty-four years old from the time I first knew her ‘til the day she died many years later. 
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“But now I am Sixty, I’m as clever as clever, So I think I’ll be sixty…forever and ever.” (with apologies to AA Milne)

All birthdays should be special. What constitutes “special” may vary from person to person. For me, it means a day made memorable by an out-of-the-ordinary experience, a surprise best wishes or visit from a long ago friend, or a gift that showed the giver “got” me. One of the best birthday gifts I ever gave my father, a physician, was a salami dressed as a doctor, complete with a tiny stethoscope. Definitely memorable. He kept Dr. Salami until it succumbed to mold.

I must confess I am a birthday girl who is hard to please. I am good at hiding disappointment with a nice meal out, a book from someone’s bestseller list, or pajamas I will never wear. I am always expecting the unexpected. Until my 60th, my last very special birthday was at age12 when my mother threw me a beatnik party where everyone dressed as Jack Kerouac or Denise Levertov and the centerpiece was a car tire wrapped in brown paper to resemble a giant doughnut. Not to say there haven’t been special moments over the years; a homemade birthday cake with purple icing and sparkly stars during a particularly bleak pandemic year, a hydroponic gizmo to grow herbs during the dark days of a New England winter, and the mix master with a dough hook that I had wanted for years. And let’s not forget the limo ride to a very nice restaurant to celebrate my 50th. I am not a complete ingrate. But nothing even made the Richter scale as earth shaking birthdays.

When the time for my 60th came around, I decided to be proactive and take matters into my own hands. I had tried this once before when I turned 40. Leaving my husband and 2-year old son behind, I strapped my seven month old baby into his car seat and hit the open road to Rockport MA for a birthday adventure. Visions of sitting by a crackling fire in a rocking chair with my sweet boy sleeping on my lap, having a quiet dinner in a family-run restaurant, and then spending the next day roaming the shops of Bear Neck, culminating in a freshly cooked lobster by the sea filled my head as I drove north under an ever darkening, rain-filled sky. My adventure had begun, but with increasingly ominous overtones. Rather than the quintessential New England inn, the bed and breakfast closely resembled Ma Perkins’ house in Psycho. No shower for me. The fact that we were the only guests, reminded me that April in New England isn’t exactly tourist season. After a quick call to my husband to reassure him, in a high squeaky unnatural voice, that we were fine, we strolled to the family-run restaurant. The fact that April is not tourist season was reaffirmed by the suspicious stares from the local diners as we made our way to the table. These stares turned downright hostile when baby Huw, uncharacteristically, began to howl ceaselessly. Packing up our food, we returned to the inn and dined behind a locked door barricaded by a chest of drawers, just to be sure. The next day dawned cold and rainy (April in New England). With few shops open and not a lobster, freshly cooked or otherwise, to be found (April in you know where) we set out for home. A memorable and (unfortunately) unforgettable birthday.

Twenty years later, I was older and wiser. My 60th birthday was going to be the birthday of my dreams. And it was. I got a tattoo, drove an F1 racecar, and announced ROADTRIP to my family. With maps and massive amounts of information from AAA, my husband, two sons, and I went South, the only sensible direction to go from New England in April. The goal was to visit as many minor league baseball parks in Virginia, North and South Carolina as we could and to don shorts and T-shirts while New England still shivered in its pseudo-spring. We ate Krispy Kreme donuts whenever we found them, hiked through acres of wildflowers in meadows while being lost on back roads, sat with a sun wizened farmer in a well-worn John Deere cap as he relived the days when the large coarse foliage of tobacco plants covered the fields filling the air with a sweet fragrance, and cheered on the young players as they played ball with enthusiasm, energy, and hopes of making the “Bigs” one day. A birthday planned by me met all my expectations. Rounding out this perfect birthday was the totally unexpected, a surprise party arranged by my husband, a man who can barely plan what socks to wear, much less organize and execute a secret party with dozens of friends, family, and colleagues. I think, 14 years later, he is still recovering.

So, in terms of birthdays, I think I’ll be 60 forever and ever.